Only You for Me
by sheofgraywings
Summary: "There could only be you, my love..." A series of very short oneshots about the marriage candidates without rivals. Try to guess the character described in each chapter! Written in the second person as an experiment, and I take requests from reviewers.
1. Still

So he's a thief, but you're okay with that, and that surprises him. After all, you're so hard-working and ethical and righteously angry with him when he freezes you in your steps. But still, every night, there you are, waiting for him, hair mussed and messy from a day of honest work but beautiful with the moonlight flowing through it. His heart stops just a little, against his better judgment. He's a thief, someone impermanent and flashy and temporary. Being a farmer, you're his opposite, all solidness and security and connection to your land.

Still, he can't help but want to talk to you, to get to know you better, to try a new line every night and find one that sticks. You're so kind, trying to keep him out of the houses of your neighbors with little trinkets and gifts and meals. You try to make him promise, but he deflects you every night. He loses track of the time and focuses on walking closer to you, brushing your fingers with his when you aren't paying attention. He loves the way you blush.

And with that simple fact, he tumbles into love with you less gracefully than he's ever done anything. All at once, he loves you, your skin, your laugh, your half-amused sigh when he boasts of his exploits. It's like he's always loved you, and it's like he's never not known you. So when he sees a feather in your pack, resting carefully between your everyday items, he panics. You're not looking at him tonight, avoiding eye contact and uncharacteristically chattering, and his heart sinks. He tries to think when you part ways with him, trotting back to your warm home and bed. He has to stop you, he can't bear knowing there's someone else, but what can he do?

He'll steal your feather, then. It's childish and silly and not really a solution if you love someone else, but it's all he can think and before he can think another thought he's sneaking in your window, rustling around in the dark and trying to steal from you, from you, from the only person who has ever held his heart and his mind in her hands. But he can't find anything and he can hear you moving, so on a whim he scribbles down a note, something cheesy about stealing your heart, something you'd probably see right through but it's all he can think to do. He flees; he'll come back tomorrow and find it, then, take it before you can give it away.

The next night, you're awake when he comes in your door, and his heart is pounding but he says something glib and sly and meaningless.

Before he can get too far, though, you interrupt him. Exasperated, you tell him that the feather is for him.

He can't believe it. You're beautiful and good and so much more than he.

Still. There you stand, and he crosses the room and takes your face between his palms and breathes you in, breathes in the color of your eyes looking up at him and breathes in your breath.

He's only a thief.

Still. You love him.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

I have an ongoing series of one-shots about the canon characters, so now I'm going to do them for the special bachelors/bachelorettes. Yippee! :) Here at the bottom of the page, I'll tell you which character I'm writing about, though if I'm doing my job, it should be pretty easy to guess. This only, obviously, is Skye from DS Cute. He's possibly my favorite bachelor ever… *happy sigh*


	2. Predictions

She lives out in the middle of the forest, isolated from the rest of the world, because she got too good at predicting the humans. She fills her hours with spelling teddy bears and bothering the Goddess, trying to keep her mind from bouncing off the walls of her skull. If the Goddess weren't so close, she never would have made her home here, out in the wilderness with no one around. She's bored.

Then one day, people land. She watches them through a mirror, watches them staggering in the sand and blindly filling old houses from decades ago. She sighs with pleasure at the beginning of a new game.

You show up at her door one day, and she's intrigued. You only blink at her appearance, eyebrows raised at her exclamations. Normal people would be scared, or at least alarmed, but you just stand there, looking back at her curiously. She's intrigued, as she is by anything different from what her centuries of life have shown her, so when you begin to visit her daily with little offerings, she's anything but upset.

It gets to be a routine, somehow, your daily visits and the ensuing long talks. Everything you do astounds her, breaking the pattern of humankind as she knows it. If she expects something of you, you go in the opposite direction, constantly surprising and entertaining her. She begins to expect your arrival every day, and when you're sick or busy or otherwise kept she spends the day in squirmy discomfort, wondering why you haven't come. You laugh at her panic the next day, and she's not annoyed. She's just happy you're back, that you haven't forgotten her out here in the middle of the forest.

Suddenly she needs you, to her alarm. She's never been in love before, never depended so wholly on someone else before; she doesn't know how to behave. Maybe you cast a spell on her, maybe she should catch you in a butterfly net and keep you with her always, she doesn't know. But she knows she needs you now, needs that daily startled moment when you do something she couldn't predict.

She can never predict you, so when you propose, she's taken totally by surprise.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

This one is the Witch Princess from the Island of Happiness/Sunshine Islands games. She's such a fun character! =]


	3. Expressing

You tell him he doesn't talk about his thoughts enough, but he thinks all the time. He just can't express it.

Did you ever know he almost stabbed you once? He hopes not. He'd never do that now. But back then, when all he knew of life was hunting and scraping out a right to survive in the jungle, you jumped through the underbrush like a deer, leaping out into the open not two feet from him, and he almost reached out and stabbed you with his spear. Even to think of it now embarrasses him, to think of seeing danger in you. You are always so gentle and kind to everything. You raise animals and try to keep them _alive_, for Goddess' sake.

And you take the time to explain things to him he's never thought of, words he's never heard, and yet somehow he never feels stupid. There's a man who watches him through the jungle and asks him questions, but that man so clearly thinks he's stupid that he wishes he could stab _him _with his spear sometimes. But he remembers how upset you got when he came to your home and he thought the black-and-white beasts were to be eaten; if you loved even those creatures so much, he guesses you'd frown upon the stabbing of the rude man.

And he doesn't want you to frown. As you sit with him, under a tree by the river, lazily holding his hand and sitting in his lap and falling asleep against his chest, he never wants you to be unhappy. He wishes he could hold you all the time, keep you safe and loved and warm inside his chest, next to his heart. His heart breaks when you cry, did you know that? He can't express these things sometimes, these feelings he has for you, because he doesn't know all the words just yet.

But whether he can tell you all this yet, it's all true. He sighs into your hair and squeezes your hand, content to express himself with only this.

Until he learns the words.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

This pairing was requested by Arynna; thanks so much for reviewing! *sends internet cookies* I'm sure it's fairly easy to guess; I mean, how many really "wild" men do we have in the Harvest Moon series? It is, of course, Shea, from Island of Happiness and Sunshine Islands! He's such a sweet guy, I must say, and it was fun to write him. :)


	4. Stone

She was supposed to be a thing of life, but sometimes life was more than she could handle. She lived as if she was made of stone, never moving or changing, unaffected by the immediacy that struck the little things that lived around her. Like a stone, she altered only slowly, over centuries of erosion. And as much as she hates it, as much as she wishes she could squeeze the rapture from living that the humans and birds and animals seem to do, she just can't. It's not in her to shift like quicksilver, the secret to the humans' pleasure in living.

In fact, when she began to die, it was almost a relief. At last, something was changing, something was really moving in her. But her attendants seemed so sorrowful that she let them find a human to save her, though she doubted their success.

One of them brought back you. You were like every other human, bright and vigorous and completely confounded by the thought of willing death. Her attendants gave you tasks to restore the land, which by and by was bound to restore her health, and she offered you encouragement and hints because that was her nature. Still, she couldn't help but hope you would fail and she would, at last, after countless dusty years, be changed.

But you didn't fail. With a diligence she would not have expected, you completed each task required to appease her attendants. You came every day to visit her, to check on her condition. She tried to help you, tried to make sure your animals were tended and the weather was fine on festival days for you. These little human favors would have been commonplace and ordinary for humans, but for her to make such a change to her habits…

You saved her, and not only from the failing health of the land. After so many years, you were the only thing that could save her from becoming a thing of stone.

You made her love again, love life, and most importantly, love you.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

I suppose this one could be any number of goddesses throughout the games, but it's the one I'm perhaps the second-most familiar with (the first being the goddess of Mineral Town and the Island games); this one is the Harvest Goddess from the Tree of Tranquility/Animal March games. She's got a real name, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won't put it here. ;) Enjoy, and thanks for reading!


	5. Belonging

Being not only a scholar but an immortal one, he studies differences, and from there he studies you. He's not naturally inclined to change, so the metamorphosis you've imposed is something of wonder to him, something tasting strange and fragrant on his tongue. His heart moans when you leave the room, even only for a moment, and he can't understand it.

But he wants to.

So he studies this adoration, this all-devouring love that nestles on the edge of his breastbone and plaintively stretches out its wings for you. In his observations and notes, he learns of how he belongs to you.

He belongs to your agile, rough, long-fingered hands, to the long lashing line across your palm that you wanted him to read.

He belongs to the bead of sweat on your brow when you charge into the house in the noon of summer, collapsing on a couch and proclaiming, "Goddess, I'm dying!"

He belongs to your eyes, staring up at him and gently closing because you love to find his mouth with only the feel of his breath on your lips.

He belongs to the way you cry when thunderstorms kill your flowers or panic your livestock, when you watch one of those movies where the protagonist dies.

He belongs to you in all these ways and more, belongs to these details of you that he gathers and presses close to his breastbone to sate the all-devouring love until you come back to him.

Because he belongs to you. And you belong to him.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

Whoo! I was away from home for a patch, which made my internet availability far less stable. . But! I'm back now! And this one should be fairly easy to guess; it's Wizard (I won't give his real name, for that be a spoiler ;]) from Animal March! He's _such_ an adorable bachelor, and one of my very favorites.

This chapter "sponsored" by Blue October's "Amazing;" though I love Wizard and felt he should come next, I was having a hard time coming up with a concept for his chapter. Then came Blue October, always a source of inspiration; the line "I study the ways I believe I belong to you," fit the Wizard perfectly, in my mind, and from there I was back on track.

…Ahem. This is the longest "author's notes" section I've ever written. . I'll be less long-winded in the future, I swear! And a quick disclaimer, while I'm at it; I own nothing in this story except the word arrangements: Blue October, Harvest Moon, and all things that fall under those umbrellas aren't mine. =]


	6. Questions

She tilts her head, laughs uncomfortably. "What makes you think you're so important to me anyway?"

You open your mouth to protest but she is staggering on, her voice getting higher and higher, her words sharper and clearer like glass. "What makes you think I need to be here? I mean, it's not like you're so special, so meaningful. It's not as if you could have…I mean…you're confusing me. I just…" Her cheeks are getting red and you step forward but she holds up a hand and you freeze, unable to push her, unable to move.

"I don't want this, and I didn't ask for it," she says quietly. "Who gave you permission to fall in love with me?"

You chuckle at that, despite her high color and held-up hand, and you reach out, lay your palm against hers. She blinks but doesn't pull back. You can't speak, you can't think of the right words, so you try to speak with your eyes, with watching her and waiting out her storm.

She smiles slowly, sweetly, that smile that drew you like wind to the grass, ruffling and smoothing your skin, your mind. "And…who made you so important to me?" she goes on and her voice is so soft that it's like her eyes are talking. "Why do I need to be near you? Why does my chest strangle me when I think you might be hurt or bored or lonely? I'm confused. I didn't ask for you, for something I didn't know I needed."

And her eyes give you permission to move forward, pull her to you, tuck your chin into her neck.

She kisses your jaw and murmurs against your skin, her lips smooth and light as wind, "How could I do anything but love you?"

AUTHOR'S NOTES

Well, it's been far longer since my last one than I intended; I'm a rather…flighty? Absent-minded? Fickle?…updater at best, and being a college freshman isn't helping. Sorry, guys! DX But I'm on winter break and for the duration, I'll be dusting off this old project! Anyway, this lovely lady was a request from weirdogirl…sorry it's taken me so long! Anyway, not sure if it's obvious or not, but it's Leia, from the DS(Cute) games! I suppose we've caught her and the farmer having a bit of a spat, but they make up, just like always! :)


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